Q&A
The night before being interviewed, Danish architect Bjarke Ingels was surrounded by autograph-seeking fans at the end of a talk at Roy Thompson Hall. Alongside developer Ian Gillespie, founder of Westbank, and writer/artist Douglas Coupland, Ingels told a nearly packed house about designing KING Toronto, a new development featuring heaving peaks of greenery-covered cubes set to break ground in one of the city’s heritage districts.
The architect behind such buildings as the spiraling Danish pavilion at the 2010 World Expo, the ramps and terraces of Copenhagen’s 8 House, the twisting tower of Vancouver House and the new Telus Tower in Calgary, Ingels and his BIG group of architects are recognized worldwide for their urban designs. So how does he feel about the term “starchitect”? “Nobody’s in love with the term,” Ingels says. “It sounds pretentious no matter who’s saying it, right?” The only good that can come from such a moniker, he continues, is that it means the work of certain architects “has caught the interest of the public, so much that people take an interest in what they do and what they do to our cities. That’s probably a good thing.”
Historically, says Ingels, people have seldom been engaged with architecture, apart from the idea that the past was better and more beautiful. “The more people have an interest in architecture and architects, the more they’ll be able to form informed opinions,” he says, “and have a meaningful discussion about the cities we want to live in.”
Since it was announced two years ago, the KING Toronto project Ingels designed for Westbank has had both passionate defenders and detractors. The strange thing is both sides have been referencing the same things about the building: its greenery-covered complex of interlocking boxes or “pixels,” as Ingels describes them, and its use of glass blocks instead of, say, Toronto’s venerable red brick. The architect admits he wasn’t surprised.
“When I started studying architecture, people would always ask, ‘Can you tell me, why are all modern buildings so boring?’ I think everybody has this feeling that it used to be charming, but you have to go a hundred years back, and now it’s all glass towers on retail podia. So, I think there are a lot of people who think you could try harder, and others who find it disconcerting when things look different from what they’re used to. Because you’ll see that maybe the buildings that don’t cause a lot of counter reaction also don’t inspire a lot of love.”
Ingels had just come from seeing a full-sized mock-up of a portion of the building that morning and was clearly pleased. He says what has been lost in all the concern about his design choices is how the building will look up close — and how different it will look from any other glass tower.
“There are no hundred-foot facades. The longest facade is 10 feet, because it’s always stepping or pixelating, but even those surfaces are going to have so much variation because of the glass brick.”
Apart from the public reaction, Ingels and Westbank have had to convince the city’s planners a complex such as KING Toronto, so visibly different from anything built here until now, will complement and even enhance the heritage district where it ’s being constructed.
“When you work for a city you have to champion the past as much as you have to champion the future,” says Ingels. “But you absolutely have to champion the future. Who are the most important people in the city? The children, because they are the future, and you have to make it possible for them to have an impact and not lock them up in what we used to do. I think the same is true with architecture.”
As it’s currently configured, KING Toronto will incorporate several red brick heritage buildings into its undulating of cubes and vegetation, in addition to public art, an interior courtyard and a new public park. Ingels has come to understand the importance the city places on preserving its streetscapes, and thinks he’s struck the right balance.
“But you have to tread carefully, when you have existing qualities like we do at King Street,” he says. “There should be a way where the two can successfully coexist. In my perspective, by not confusing what’s old and what’s new, but making sure they successfully coexist, you preserve the past and reinvent it and contribute something towards the future.”
Ingels remembers coming to Toronto in 2003 for the first time at the beginning of his career to work on a project with local design guru Bruce Mau. He’s had some time to contemplate the city’s identity, and compares it sympathetically to his own home.
“Toronto has this interesting mix of classic, North American east coast city with some kind of combination of an Anglo-Saxon industrial heritage with some skyscrapers, combined with this really, really diverse population. As a Dane you relate a lot to Canada for a lot of reasons, as this socially democratic, environmentally oriented, somewhat self-ironic northern country sitting on top of a very aggressive big brother — there’s some sort of kindred alignment there.”